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Suggestions on Producing Board Game in China

If you want to earn money through building your own broad game, you should publish your game especially in China. Why? Broad game is already a traditional industry in foreign countries, and there are many excellent games, especially the type of strategy; however, relative circle in China is very small. So take your chance.

Here I conclude six gists you should pay attention to, because it’s a hard start if you want money in your pocket this way.

Be Prepared for your expansion

The following two graphics show the comparison of ratings between board game and board game expansion.

Two graphs from session 1, corresponding to rating_year1 and rating_year2

These two graphics show the relationship between users’ rating and the year of publishing. You might be not able to see the distinction of rating on the first graph cause they are mostly overlapped, but notice those three points, they stand for the series of game “Realms” and its expansion. It’s clear that these three expansions were published later than its board game; however, users graded them a better score. Thus, the overall score would be higher, which cause that users buy your board game just because of your expansions.

And it always works. See the second graph. It’s very easy to conclude the mean score of expansion is greater than the mean of just board game. Since expansion is one of components of a board game, you cannot ignore it.

Pay Attention to The Circumstance of The World

If you don’t know what to choose as your game topic. Look around the world. You might find something useful.

graph from session 2, corresponding to amount_wargame

This graph show the relationship between the year of publishing and types of game, aiming to show you the importance of adapting to the times. The density means how many of that type of board game were published during that period of years.

On September 2, 1945, the Japanese government signed an unconditional surrender certification to the United States, China, Britain and the Soviet Union on the deck of the American warship Missouri. After that, the Second World War came to the end and all involved countries went into a period of economy recovery. Economic Board game came to the world, but with a little influence. Then, people were trying to imagine the future world, the fantasy board game came up and reach the climax around 1980, but it went down quickly. Board games with the theme of western America did have some influences for kind of reasons, but it was inconsistent. However, war board game like a crane standing among chickens, although they were not published too much, they took over the market and kept that situation to the present. The point I would like to make right here is game might need to reflect the world.

graph from session 2, corresponding to amount_wargame_WW and warcomp

See how many board games were associated with World War II and that increasing rate of ratings? The topic of war will never end.

Consider the complexity of your board game.

Your want your game to be either extremely simple or appropriate difficult. The following three graphics show why it is.

graph from session 3, corresponding to gameComplex_gametype and gameRatings_gametype

Expansion as a part of games, it has a whole new continent with a new race and a whole other story. In one word, expansion has more features, which cause that expansion has higher complexity and this brings higher rating. These two graphics show the relationship with complexity and type of game, and the relationship with rating and game type respectively. That red little point stands for mean value. It’s pretty straight forward that expansion is better in the class of complexity.

How difficult it should be?

graph from session 3, corresponding to gameComplex_ratings

This graph shows the relationship between complexity and ratings. You can just drop off the idea of complexity, because some players do love simple game than hard game. It’s much easy for them to get started. Or, push your game to the level 3 or level 4 of complexity. That makes you game more challenge without being tedious. It’s easy to say that in the graph of expansion, there is a turning point at level 4 of complexity, which after rating goes down. In graph of board game, although the rating for level 5 complexity is higher than level 4, there are also more lower-rated games.

Maybe one-player form should be in your outline

For some group of people, maybe it’s hard for them and their friends to be together, or maybe some people want to play board game to kill time. In this perspective, you should consider the minimum players of normally operating the game.

graph from session 4, corresponding to coopgame_rating

This graph shows the relationship between minimum players and rating.

At present, most of the table games in the market are co-operative and the score fo table games that one person can play is higher than the bottom limit of table games that many people can play.

Based on the graph, the game with standard of minimum players 1 have not-bad lowest score and great highest score. Compare to minimum-players-5 and minimum-players-6 board game, though they have greater lowest score, their highest score were constrained.

Give players a break

Here is actually an another reason for not overcomplicating your board game.

graph from session 5, corresponding to timeplaying_rating

These two graphs show the relationship between playing time and ratings overall on both board game and related expansion. From the red curve line, we can conclude that the higher the complexity is, the longer the playing time is, because of kinds of features of expansion. I understand all game producers would like to let players play their games, but have you ever though plays might quit just because of it takes too long?

graph from session 5, corresponding to timeplaying_complexity

From this graph, Which cause that the longer the playing time is, the lower the rating would be.

Youshould understand players psychologically

We first distinguish players according to different age groups.

graph from session 6, corresponding to minage_rating

It can be seen that there are some rules between minimum age and board game, but they are not obvious. The overall distribution of the average time length can be roughly estimated as normal distribution. This shows that board game mainly attract players aged 8 to 12, so I suggest you consider the characteristics of players aged 8 to 12 when designing games.

In what aspect?

graph from session 6, corresponding to category_count_age8, category_count_age10, and category_count_age12

The following three graphics conclude the numbers of each them of board game. There are reasons for the top 10 games in each age. Maybe to players age 8-10, they prefer abstract and animal games because they want to see dynamic change. To players around 12, they prefer war game as you can see war-related game all have a large circulation because they’re looking for excitement and enjoy the achievement of their logic ability.

So, Be thoughtful.